“Hi Lucy. How are you today?” The young girl looked up at me as I gave her a friendly wave.
“Hello,” she replied. “Tomorrow’s my birthday.”
“Awesome! How old will you be?”
“Five.”
It wasn’t exactly an extraordinary conversation, but it was big for Lucy. We had met a year earlier, when I began interning at the Jersey Shore Free School: A Sudbury School, in Little Silver, N.J. I had decided to found my own democratic school, South Jersey Sudbury School, and wanted to first get some hands-on experience and mentoring from the Jersey Shore school’s founder, Dr. Jeri Quirk.